I think you miss the point of arguing by analogy here, which is to establish a moral or legal reference point (depending on the discussion). Most of us have a personal idea of the moral weight of (relatively) common actions like robbing a bank, stealing a car for a joyride (you asked for it!) and helping an old woman cross the street. When we are faced with a new phenomenon (abusing the fact that users run your code to suborn their computing power for personal gain), we need to decide what moral weight to give it
I'm always against analogies, but I have two problems with this analogy:
1. The analogy presented is so far beyond what occured in terms of harm and ethical behavior that it fails in actually being a useful analogy. 2. The situation is not so new or complex that it cannot be understood on its own.
If you MUST use an analogy, I would suggest this:
A car dealership sells a digital dashboard system to a car owner. The man installs the system in his car. However the dealership included extra hardware called 'Automated Taxi Service' in the dashboard. When the man isn't using his car, the hardware activates and uses his car and gas as a taxi. Later, the man discovers that his car mileage is too high and discovers the automated taxi module.
There you go, an analogy which is MUCH closer to what actually happened, isn't hyperbolic, and in appropriate Slashdot fashion, is a car analogy.
I argue that basic operational knowledge also includes a security component - not complex security, but basic things like "use a password" and "lock the screen".
I would agree that such things would fall into the 'basic operational knowledge' of the equipment, but that amount of knowledge is still far below what would be necessary to secure/monitor a system against even 'entry-level' hacking knowledge. So I think the point still stands, 'Teachers can not be expected to be more knowledgeable than all middle school students in the field of computer security'
It's not unreasonable to assume that 75% of middle school students would have that same level of basic operational knowledge of computers. Personal computers were in the majority of homes for literally their entire lives (That's only now becoming true for the youngest of teachers).
This doesn't mean I don't think that SOMEONE should be responsible for ensuring that the computer systems are secure, but I don't believe it is reasonable to assume that responsiblity should be assigned to the teachers.
With physical security, we expect the teachers approach strangers, and lock the doors when the leave. We don't expect them to audit the alarm system for motion sensor blind spots or video record archiving schedules.
I own an older Nook, having picked it over the Kindle due to the 1985 scandal and Amazon's DRM systems. Also, the Nook supported the eBook lending system my local library used. I'd have gone with Amazon if not for those issues.
However, I always expected the systems to remain rather closed. I'm guessing that Nook is really feeling pressure from 'good enough' tablets and realizing the same problems that occur with also-ran App stores: Achieving critical mass.
Like it or not, an App store has to have a sufficient amount of Developers otherwise you just end up with frustrated users who wonder 'Why don't WE get what THEY have?'. Google Play, while still the second choice for app development, is large enough that no sane developer would just ignore that market. Conversations at an App Developer might never switch to 'Lets develop a commercial App for Android, and then develop it for iOS' (at least for now), but it was going to be very unlikely for that developer to follow up with 'And we MUST make sure it gets on the B&N Nook market'
So I'm pretty glad this is happening, but it was a little late for my family as when I cashed out my bitcoins last month, one of the purchases was an iPad mini. (I still prefer eInk for readers though)
She is also in trouble if found not guilty. Good luck getting a job when a background check turns up arrests/charges.
Hopefully she never needs to get a job with a security clearance. The wording for some of the questions has changed to 'have you ever' rather than 'in the last 7 years, have you ever'.
If I'd been prosecuted this way for some of the "experiments" my brothers and I did as teenagers, I'd be doing life.
Ever watch the movie 'October Sky'? (good movie)
If you aren't familiar, it's a story about a group of kids who get interested in rocketry and go about researching and building their own solid fuel rockets (before the era of Estes). The reactions you see in the film seemed over the top to me (having been in a rocket club sponsored by my school), but in a school today I could imagine half the students being killed in an ATF raid if they tried it today.
Middle school in the US is where you start to see teachers specialize (In elementary school you tend to have a single teacher for the majority of the day and only switch for things like music/gym/etc)
Middle school was when I first took apart my parent's computer, ran up the phone bill connecting to BBSs (as a kid not realizing that same area code didn't mean local), and started learning the ropes about computers by struggling to get the sound working at the same time as other components. (config.sys autoexec.bat, etc)
To expect a teacher, who may have no real interest in computers, to keep pace with the insatiable curiosity of a student 'looking under the hood' is simply not reasonable.
Would you expect the English teacher to be able to outpace a student who picks up an interest in Geology?
When I was 12, I also got really into airplanes, and studied hard to get my pilot's license asap. Would you expect any non-pilot teachers to have more knowledge about FAA regulations than a budding hobbyist?
You might as well say, "Because it's bad to damage streetlights, but fine to set fires?" The robbing a bank analogy just doesn't need to be applied because the situation doesn't require an analogy. Everyone on this site is capable of understanding the technical details of what they did, we don't need to obfuscate the problem by unnecessarily applying analogies.
I guess I'm just so used to companies issuing non or backhanded apologies that when one actually does more than offer 10% off your next purchase, my outrage generator gets short circuited.
Thinking about it a bit more now that I realize that it wasn't just processing, but pulling in 100% CPU/GPU utilization, I'm a bit more upset. (mostly because how can you 'accidentally' leave in such a huge freaking mechanism for putting egg on your face)
I've never seen an instance of amortizing the cost of anything in which the total amount paid was less than paying for something outright. Cars, furniture, computers, phones, homes...
Users vented their anger on the ESEA forums claiming that their video cards were maintaining over 90 celcius+ temperatures for extended period
Aside from not opening the source code for their client, the ESEA handled this situation well.
Your problems with your video card do not come from them. If you care about longevity and reliability, you need to stop overclocking your GPU and follow the manufacturer's instructions. By default, the hardware WILL shutdown if the virtual Tj reaches an unsafe level. If you disable that feature, don't cry when your card blows up. It could have easily happened while gaming.
(I am an electrical engineer. All our products are tested up to 85C ambient temperature, at maximum load. We only use driver ICs with built-in protection from overtemperature, overcurrent, and short-circuit.)
It's good that your product can handle up to 85C at maximum load. That's a good way to check that your product can survive 85C at maximum load. But I'm a systems engineer, and the fact that your product can survive doesn't do me much good when I'm concerned about the increased failure rate when a product is run at 100% for an extended period of time.
Gaming Video cards were NOT designed to operate at 100% utilization for extended periods of time. That sort of activity will result in shorter lifespans regardless of the fact that it can survive a high temp environment for a short period of time.
The big question is: How long did they hold onto that 'shitload' of bitcoins?
While mathematically clever, they were probably not also clairvoyant. Granted, with such low initial investment costs, they could afford to hold onto them for a longer time than people who invested at higher prices, but they would have had no way of knowing that $10/bitcoin wasn't the peak before the fall.
But they are ignoring the costs of the clean-up. Every single user that had their system compromised like that needs to check everything from scratch to verify that the sports league software didn't compromise their systems in any other ways.
I'm sorry, but no. You could apply the same logic to any other piece of software that was ever installed on any system ever. Unless you verified every line of code, how can you be sure that there wasn't some reused code from another project which had unwanted, but unnoticed behavior? Do you realize how often even unintentional backdoors are discovered in software because pieces were (often lazily) included from other working pieces?
I'm sorry, but the instant you install ANY software that you didn't write yourself, or verify line-by-line, you cannot be certain that your system isn't compromised.
Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
... After they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, yes. Meanwhile, were I, a non-corporation, to do something like this, the FBI would be coming through my door with a bunch of dudes with shotguns for an enhanced "interview" over my connections to terrorism, money laundering, etc.
So, my question is... whether intentional or accidental, it happened. That means it's a crime. So... where is the charge sheet, mmm?
There is a subtle difference that you seem to be missing. The difference is 'mens rea'.
There is nothing wrong with the real Firefox (as it relates to this story). But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about how people react to brands and how it often is an irrational behavior. In fact, the very reason that branding works is because of irrational behavior. Let's try a few examples. Consider what associations your mind makes when you first hear these brands/products/trademarks/names.
White Ford Bronco Zyclon B Bushmaster Jonestown Sandusky
The point is that it is unreasonable to expect people to live their entire lives in sealed container only conducting business with the outside world via a trusted third party just to have a chance to preserve some privacy.
The point is that to function as a human being you shouldn't be required to surrender all of your privacy simply to interact with other humans.
You replied to the wrong post. I never used the word "generally." In fact I gave a "particular" counter-example. Learn to read.
I responded to the correct post, yours. A 'particular counter-example' might mean something if the person you were responding to didn't literally use the term 'generally'.
See, when someone makes a statement, "You generally don't find humans on the Moon." It doesn't add anything to the conversation to say, "But Buzz Aldrin was there!"
Generally, those sorts of conversations occur between teachers and elementary students. I say generally, because sometimes it also happens on the internet.
What does it let you do that a smart phone doesn't do already?
Well compared to the more traditional blackberry, the iphone... Oh wait, we had this discussion already.
The thing is, this device doesn't need to replicate every function of other PEDs to be useful. My smartphone has replaced a lot of what I used to use my laptop for (checking email, looking up directions, pulling up cooking recipes), but for some situations, I still prefer the laptop.
The problem with the Segway was that it was a VERY expensive solution to a minor problem. IIRC the entry level Segway cost over $5,000. People could buy a literal car for that price (or a good motorized scooter for less than half). It wasn't sufficiently better at anything that what other options could provide for less.
Augmented reality HUDs on the other hand, are features which a lot of people want, and the price is not such that it would drive people away.
Hello, generally pigiron, I've also heard that generally people make poor financial decisions and generally are out of shape. Any other generalizations which apply only to you which you would like to discuss?
Not true. You have no expectation that something made public can be retroactively made private, not that everything relating to public spaces is automatically non-private.
Public restrooms are public access spaces in which a person can expect a great deal of visual privacy but little auditory privacy.
There is also a consideration for the efforts people take to ensure that something remains private. That's why merely locking a container with locks that are trivially circumvented triggers legal protections regarding the contents of that container.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you miss the point of arguing by analogy here, which is to establish a moral or legal reference point (depending on the discussion). Most of us have a personal idea of the moral weight of (relatively) common actions like robbing a bank, stealing a car for a joyride (you asked for it!) and helping an old woman cross the street. When we are faced with a new phenomenon (abusing the fact that users run your code to suborn their computing power for personal gain), we need to decide what moral weight to give it
I'm always against analogies, but I have two problems with this analogy:
1. The analogy presented is so far beyond what occured in terms of harm and ethical behavior that it fails in actually being a useful analogy.
2. The situation is not so new or complex that it cannot be understood on its own.
If you MUST use an analogy, I would suggest this:
A car dealership sells a digital dashboard system to a car owner. The man installs the system in his car. However the dealership included extra hardware called 'Automated Taxi Service' in the dashboard. When the man isn't using his car, the hardware activates and uses his car and gas as a taxi. Later, the man discovers that his car mileage is too high and discovers the automated taxi module.
There you go, an analogy which is MUCH closer to what actually happened, isn't hyperbolic, and in appropriate Slashdot fashion, is a car analogy.
I argue that basic operational knowledge also includes a security component - not complex security, but basic things like "use a password" and "lock the screen".
I would agree that such things would fall into the 'basic operational knowledge' of the equipment, but that amount of knowledge is still far below what would be necessary to secure/monitor a system against even 'entry-level' hacking knowledge. So I think the point still stands, 'Teachers can not be expected to be more knowledgeable than all middle school students in the field of computer security'
It's not unreasonable to assume that 75% of middle school students would have that same level of basic operational knowledge of computers. Personal computers were in the majority of homes for literally their entire lives (That's only now becoming true for the youngest of teachers).
This doesn't mean I don't think that SOMEONE should be responsible for ensuring that the computer systems are secure, but I don't believe it is reasonable to assume that responsiblity should be assigned to the teachers.
With physical security, we expect the teachers approach strangers, and lock the doors when the leave. We don't expect them to audit the alarm system for motion sensor blind spots or video record archiving schedules.
I own an older Nook, having picked it over the Kindle due to the 1985 scandal and Amazon's DRM systems. Also, the Nook supported the eBook lending system my local library used. I'd have gone with Amazon if not for those issues.
However, I always expected the systems to remain rather closed. I'm guessing that Nook is really feeling pressure from 'good enough' tablets and realizing the same problems that occur with also-ran App stores: Achieving critical mass.
Like it or not, an App store has to have a sufficient amount of Developers otherwise you just end up with frustrated users who wonder 'Why don't WE get what THEY have?'. Google Play, while still the second choice for app development, is large enough that no sane developer would just ignore that market. Conversations at an App Developer might never switch to 'Lets develop a commercial App for Android, and then develop it for iOS' (at least for now), but it was going to be very unlikely for that developer to follow up with 'And we MUST make sure it gets on the B&N Nook market'
So I'm pretty glad this is happening, but it was a little late for my family as when I cashed out my bitcoins last month, one of the purchases was an iPad mini. (I still prefer eInk for readers though)
She is also in trouble if found not guilty. Good luck getting a job when a background check turns up arrests/charges.
Hopefully she never needs to get a job with a security clearance. The wording for some of the questions has changed to 'have you ever' rather than 'in the last 7 years, have you ever'.
If I'd been prosecuted this way for some of the "experiments" my brothers and I did as teenagers, I'd be doing life.
Ever watch the movie 'October Sky'? (good movie)
If you aren't familiar, it's a story about a group of kids who get interested in rocketry and go about researching and building their own solid fuel rockets (before the era of Estes). The reactions you see in the film seemed over the top to me (having been in a rocket club sponsored by my school), but in a school today I could imagine half the students being killed in an ATF raid if they tried it today.
Middle school in the US is where you start to see teachers specialize (In elementary school you tend to have a single teacher for the majority of the day and only switch for things like music/gym/etc)
Middle school was when I first took apart my parent's computer, ran up the phone bill connecting to BBSs (as a kid not realizing that same area code didn't mean local), and started learning the ropes about computers by struggling to get the sound working at the same time as other components. (config.sys autoexec.bat, etc)
To expect a teacher, who may have no real interest in computers, to keep pace with the insatiable curiosity of a student 'looking under the hood' is simply not reasonable.
Would you expect the English teacher to be able to outpace a student who picks up an interest in Geology?
When I was 12, I also got really into airplanes, and studied hard to get my pilot's license asap. Would you expect any non-pilot teachers to have more knowledge about FAA regulations than a budding hobbyist?
I can buy a literal laptop or desktop computer for the price of my smartphone.
I don't really see how you can honestly say that the Glass is going to encumber you more than a freaking desktop computer...
No, because this was not a bank robbery.
You might as well say, "Because it's bad to damage streetlights, but fine to set fires?" The robbing a bank analogy just doesn't need to be applied because the situation doesn't require an analogy. Everyone on this site is capable of understanding the technical details of what they did, we don't need to obfuscate the problem by unnecessarily applying analogies.
Besides, it didn't even TRY to include a car.
It's a hell of a lot easier to switch from bitcoins than to switch from dollars.
I guess I'm just so used to companies issuing non or backhanded apologies that when one actually does more than offer 10% off your next purchase, my outrage generator gets short circuited.
Thinking about it a bit more now that I realize that it wasn't just processing, but pulling in 100% CPU/GPU utilization, I'm a bit more upset. (mostly because how can you 'accidentally' leave in such a huge freaking mechanism for putting egg on your face)
I've never seen an instance of amortizing the cost of anything in which the total amount paid was less than paying for something outright. Cars, furniture, computers, phones, homes...
Users vented their anger on the ESEA forums claiming that their video cards were maintaining over 90 celcius+ temperatures for extended period
Aside from not opening the source code for their client, the ESEA handled this situation well.
Your problems with your video card do not come from them. If you care about longevity and reliability, you need to stop overclocking your GPU and follow the manufacturer's instructions. By default, the hardware WILL shutdown if the virtual Tj reaches an unsafe level. If you disable that feature, don't cry when your card blows up. It could have easily happened while gaming.
(I am an electrical engineer. All our products are tested up to 85C ambient temperature, at maximum load. We only use driver ICs with built-in protection from overtemperature, overcurrent, and short-circuit.)
It's good that your product can handle up to 85C at maximum load. That's a good way to check that your product can survive 85C at maximum load. But I'm a systems engineer, and the fact that your product can survive doesn't do me much good when I'm concerned about the increased failure rate when a product is run at 100% for an extended period of time.
Gaming Video cards were NOT designed to operate at 100% utilization for extended periods of time. That sort of activity will result in shorter lifespans regardless of the fact that it can survive a high temp environment for a short period of time.
As long as a sufficient number of people didn't decide that they didn't want you owning 5% of the world and just said "Nope."
The big question is: How long did they hold onto that 'shitload' of bitcoins?
While mathematically clever, they were probably not also clairvoyant. Granted, with such low initial investment costs, they could afford to hold onto them for a longer time than people who invested at higher prices, but they would have had no way of knowing that $10/bitcoin wasn't the peak before the fall.
Here's a better analogy:
They included some code in their software that intentionally performed unnecessary calculations.
But they are ignoring the costs of the clean-up. Every single user that had their system compromised like that needs to check everything from scratch to verify that the sports league software didn't compromise their systems in any other ways.
I'm sorry, but no. You could apply the same logic to any other piece of software that was ever installed on any system ever. Unless you verified every line of code, how can you be sure that there wasn't some reused code from another project which had unwanted, but unnoticed behavior? Do you realize how often even unintentional backdoors are discovered in software because pieces were (often lazily) included from other working pieces?
I'm sorry, but the instant you install ANY software that you didn't write yourself, or verify line-by-line, you cannot be certain that your system isn't compromised.
Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
... After they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, yes. Meanwhile, were I, a non-corporation, to do something like this, the FBI would be coming through my door with a bunch of dudes with shotguns for an enhanced "interview" over my connections to terrorism, money laundering, etc.
So, my question is... whether intentional or accidental, it happened. That means it's a crime. So... where is the charge sheet, mmm?
There is a subtle difference that you seem to be missing. The difference is 'mens rea'.
Yeah, it shouldn't be illegal to rob a bank if you give the money back... right?
There is a problem with your post. They didn't rob a bank. So it's not like that at all.
There is nothing wrong with the real Firefox (as it relates to this story). But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about how people react to brands and how it often is an irrational behavior. In fact, the very reason that branding works is because of irrational behavior. Let's try a few examples. Consider what associations your mind makes when you first hear these brands/products/trademarks/names.
White Ford Bronco
Zyclon B
Bushmaster
Jonestown
Sandusky
The point is that it is unreasonable to expect people to live their entire lives in sealed container only conducting business with the outside world via a trusted third party just to have a chance to preserve some privacy.
The point is that to function as a human being you shouldn't be required to surrender all of your privacy simply to interact with other humans.
You replied to the wrong post. I never used the word "generally." In fact I gave a "particular" counter-example. Learn to read.
I responded to the correct post, yours. A 'particular counter-example' might mean something if the person you were responding to didn't literally use the term 'generally'.
See, when someone makes a statement, "You generally don't find humans on the Moon." It doesn't add anything to the conversation to say, "But Buzz Aldrin was there!"
Generally, those sorts of conversations occur between teachers and elementary students. I say generally, because sometimes it also happens on the internet.
What does it let you do that a smart phone doesn't do already?
Well compared to the more traditional blackberry, the iphone... Oh wait, we had this discussion already.
The thing is, this device doesn't need to replicate every function of other PEDs to be useful. My smartphone has replaced a lot of what I used to use my laptop for (checking email, looking up directions, pulling up cooking recipes), but for some situations, I still prefer the laptop.
The problem with the Segway was that it was a VERY expensive solution to a minor problem. IIRC the entry level Segway cost over $5,000. People could buy a literal car for that price (or a good motorized scooter for less than half). It wasn't sufficiently better at anything that what other options could provide for less.
Augmented reality HUDs on the other hand, are features which a lot of people want, and the price is not such that it would drive people away.
Hello, generally pigiron, I've also heard that generally people make poor financial decisions and generally are out of shape. Any other generalizations which apply only to you which you would like to discuss?
Not true. You have no expectation that something made public can be retroactively made private, not that everything relating to public spaces is automatically non-private.
Public restrooms are public access spaces in which a person can expect a great deal of visual privacy but little auditory privacy.
There is also a consideration for the efforts people take to ensure that something remains private. That's why merely locking a container with locks that are trivially circumvented triggers legal protections regarding the contents of that container.
You could extract energy from a black hole in many ways. Consider some of the properties of a black hole:
1. Lots of mass
2. Spinning rapidly
3. Low friction environment
Sound like anything we use on Earth now? Think Flywheels.
You could extract energy from a blackhole in a manner similar to the way in which we extract energy from a flywheel.